2025 Plastics Industry Trends & Predictions
Healthcare
Help or hinder: What healthcare trends do you expect will help plastics manufacturers the most in 2025? Which trends might hinder them, and why?
Several key trends are shaping the healthcare industry in 2025. The nearshoring trend, which gained momentum during the pandemic, continues to grow, especially for high-volume, low intellectual property medical equipment such as personal protective equipment (PPE), IV bags and bed pans. This presents a great opportunity for domestic suppliers to build highly automated plants that can be competitive in the domestic and global market.
New product development is critical to medical device portfolio development. After many companies paused or scaled back their R&D efforts during COVID-19, companies are refocusing on bringing new, innovative products to market and adding refinements to existing devices. Growing regulatory requirements, particularly around device classifications are adding complexity for manufacturers.
On the supply side, resin availability is strong, with plenty of capacity in both domestic and international markets, which is helping to keep resin prices stable. However, unexpected weather events, like hurricanes, and disruptions such as labor strikes at ports and resin discontinuation can complicate shipping and storage logistics, drive up costs and reduce supply chain security.
What are your tips for developing a sound resin purchasing strategy for healthcare manufacturers in 2025?
To develop a resilient resin purchasing strategy, it's important to involve a medical resin expert in your new product development process. Their expertise can help predict supply chain risks, bring proven new technology into the discussion and help ensure availability of the right materials close to the country of manufacture.
One valuable lesson from COVID-19 is the importance of diversifying resin suppliers. Many OEMs are now considering specifying two resins for critical applications to mitigate the risks of relying on a single source. During the pandemic, some companies experienced stockouts and brand damage due to supply disruptions. By qualifying a second resin, manufacturers can improve supply chain security and better control material costs.
Maintaining safety stock close to manufacturing locations is crucial, especially during times of market stress — including weather events, discontinuations, force majeures, material shortages or sourcing issues.
Which materials or services will be instrumental to the healthcare market in 2025? What factors are influencing this demand?
In the medical market, polyamides are gaining new interest and consideration because of the unique properties they bring. Polyamides are well known to accept a wide variety of reinforcements like glass and carbon fiber making them ideal for applications which require strength and toughness like hospital beds, emergency equipment and surgical tools. Nylon is even being used to add a puncture-resistant middle layer to medical packaging.
Medical-grade resins are also becoming more critical as regulations tighten. These resins often come with change notifications that alert manufacturers about product updates, such as changes in formulation. Change notifications provide an added layer of security in material selection.
What advice would you give healthcare manufacturers to drive success in 2025?
To accelerate new product development and help to create competitive advantage in 2025, it’s essential to build strong relationships with medical resin experts. Most medical companies don’t have the resources to employ full-time medical resin specialists, but engineers who understand the nuances of medical-grade materials can be invaluable, particularly for new product development. The medical resin experts can come from your resin suppliers, especially in distribution where experts are resin agnostic, have access to a breadth of medical resins and are free to add to your team.
It’s also important to gain a deeper understanding of your resin’s origin. Know whether your materials are derived from oil or propane, where they are manufactured and the processing steps involved before they reach you. This knowledge can help anticipate potential supply chain disruptions and allow you to address challenges proactively.
Finally, it’s time to revive the culture of learning and continuous improvement that seemed to drop off during the COVID-19 era. Lunch-and-learns and other educational events are valuable for keeping new product development teams up to date on new materials and technologies. Reintroducing these forums can help stakeholders stay informed about the latest innovations and opportunities in the plastics industry.
Visit our Healthcare market page for more information on M. Holland’s products and services.
